Where did the time go?

....I can't believe its been over 6 months. I've dipped into this blog a couple of times since last September with the intention of an update and just haven't done it. Since my last entry my Grad Diploma in Tertiary Teaching has been completed, graduated in December 2016 and the award framed and hung on the wall. I am very proud of the work that went into achieving that and the support from my class mates and lecture was incredible. I am already close to the end of my first paper studying for my Master on Educational Leadership and have just outlined my last assignment for this one. The work so far has been just as challenging to decipher , and I finally find myself understanding the written work we are reading, There is a big change from teaching to leading and all that goes with it, especially once you begin to unpack what your own experiences are an a leader or an emerging leader such as myself...who knows what effects this will have on my own perspective of my work and position?

Looking at my reactions to the learning taking place I am becoming much more aware of my surroundings and those within it. Hopefully I have some better idea of where people come from and that everyone has things to offer from their own context of learning and working together with others. I see that it's good to read things more than once and make notes as I go. It's still challenging to read with a critical eye, as mt tendency to soak up the information still takes over, but slowly I hear thoughts pop up that need to be noted in certain parts of the readings. There are quite a few new readings for me to look at now so I will go and look at them and see what sense I can make of emerging leaders who find it challenging to define their place in their work context.

Not quite what I am reading currently, but I can see it arriving!!!!!

Time to reflect and write

..... well, I do that every week or two really, don't I?

Today I had to bring my library books back, now my desk is half empty. For the first time I had them there in front of me for two months, and did not look at them except to go quickly through the chapter headings.  As a result I had to choose very quickly what to make note of and sacrifice the rest - that's what happens when you break your new habits.

When I got back home I was straight on to Amazon to look for some more books, but better to wait a bit - might need to see where my study takes me next year as I am still working through that.

Class on Saturday was great, a lot of insight into teaching, others thinking and a lot of laughter, that always helps the day get better. Feedback was good overall despite me giving my feedback with Page 2 first, as you couldn't really tell this week where it started and ended (and I saw that most of my paragraphs were quite self contained when I wrote it out....)

Going through the criteria for the second assignment I noticed that we are to reflect on and evaluate our learning taking per feedback into account. What I have written in my Patchwork texts is not a problem, but what I have neglected to do, is to take stock of our collaborative conversations offering insights and interpretation, that went so naturally, I better go back through this blog and see what I might have hiding as comments or noted statements. It refers mostly to the first and the third reflection, so I should be able to gather something out of my ramblings. It was all so organic I haven't consciously captured enough in my waking thoughts - so that might take some effort. Going through the Community should help as there will be some comments and queries to trigger my recollections.

So my goals for last week were all achieved and on time, yay for that, there was a LOT to get done. The voice over to the TE application turned into a marathon nightmare, I couldn't get the microphone and sound settings to stick and ended up going to bed at 1am an 3am for 2 nights. However I was very happy with the end result and so was Marc, who has always been a very fair critic to me. This has taught me that each computer will sound different though and the quality of my laptop speakers is really not that great - am I thinking about investing in a laptop again after all that and working from a usb stick after all? I'm not yet inclined to do everything through Google Drive although I can certainly see how and why I would ......

Goals for this week:

1. Make a good start on the MLT Assignment - I really have to dig around in my brain (due on Friday, 21 October) for how I can set out the collaborative and interpretive part of the feedback process
2. Make a great start on the TPA Assignment, as that is due in 4 days earlier (due on Monday 1 October)
3. keep a few in the moment times as well, Myrddin posted a great reminder of that this morning as he was enjoying his morning coffee in the sun.

The seeds of learning have all been germinating and now it's up to me 

to nurture them into strong trees for knowledge 

Reflection on Action

In conversation about this week's progress it's coming to me that I am working backwards to find the way forward. This is fine because it was the act of looking back that gave me the idea to improve my group work so that our Shops can be planned more effectively by the students.

What has bothered me this week is the fact I am having difficulty figuring out how to consciously recognise any progress in my professional development.

As I was talking to Des (lecturer Diploma Culinary) this morning it came to me that conversation is where I articulate a lot of what is going on in my mind.

I know that I think better out loud and that through conversation a lot of good ideas come up. Then I go away and work them out, which is exactly how it went this week.

By spending time looking, talking and thinking about what, how and why I needed to change things, when I finally sat down to work on those changes, they really did flow fairly fluidly onto the screen.

This allowed me to achieve some of last week's goals
1.  I am finding activities to help introduce and hopefully motivate solid group work next Trimester. The Shop assignment is updated and I have completed both a production plan and a task list for the students to work from.
2. Adding milestones is kind of done - just need to add in the class dates - the lesson schedule will be confirmed this week which will help with that.I'll put into the class calendar as well so there is complete clarity.
3. the story board made way for Canvas, I spent a frustrating Sunday afternoon working on it - I don't enjoy learning new systems especially when I'm told it's so easy! I have such clear visions of what I want I get on my own way when I don't see how to achieve that straight away.However, by yesterday morning I was a whole lot happier about what I had accomplished. After a night's sleep I saw that it will be quite good. Now to work out how I want to do the group and individual collaboration files.

So what am I learning about my teaching practise? Looking further back at my action plan I realised a lot of points were covered by the end of the day's work, and that once I organise some good tactics to introduce improvements to group work. Above all I want to avoid this!:

I think then with this hindsight, part of my plan would be to be more mindful of the impact of our expectations on our students. While talking with Des I realised that a lot of the time as lecturers, we are 70% there in our heads and don't reflect enough on how it will look to the student - where do they start from and where will they end. I know I wrote about this in my reflections on the Special Topic and Research, but I still have more to do getting this to be a part of me so I think back in better detail and get the consequences in front of me ore effectively. This meta-cognition takes time and effort, unfortunately I don't always want to listen to those voices that tell me (they can be very quiet and I can be good at putting them aside until the consequences SCREAM at me - by which time I have to RUN!) to make improvements.

Time for some story boards - I seem to be avoiding it yet I am fairly sure it will help to keep my focus so off I pop!

Action Plan and Learning Outcome

The action plan is complete, and I'm happy to say it was for 80% acceptable. As far as what my students need, is concerned, not a problem. As far as my own goals - that needed to be stated more clearly and explained throughout the action plan. Without that then there is not a lot for my own professional development, that after all was the point of this whole exercise. I think I under estimated how much harder is it so see what you need to do for yourself and to write that in clear terms. 

I need to bring the learning outcome for the Mobile course.

I came up with this:

Here is the outline of what I plan to do.

1. The context.  Where will the learning fit in the big picture? It might be a lesson or a link between lessons.  It might be a 'must know' topic that can be deepened in class.

Students in Level 4 Baking participate in 2 shop days. They plan for and carry out the preparation of baked goods for sale, which they sell themselves through our shop outlet.

2 What is the intended learning outcome?

'Calculate the ingredients require and the cost of that food for Shop Day using the Excel template provided.'

As a part of this process they have to work together to produce the food order based on the product list while also states how much of each will be made.

In level 3, students have learned how to calculate the cost of a recipe do they know how to calculate the cost of ingredients.

Using the excel temple provided will give student the opportunity to complete the recipes and product specifications as a part of the shop exercise. The template will also calculate an estimated selling price per unit, as long as the recipe and yells are put in correctly.

3. R2D2. How can the learning outcome/s be achieved and fulfill all 4 parts of this model.

The main part of this task will be 2-3 short video clips explaining step by step what students have to do to complete the order 

Part 1 will be a short video of how an excel sheet works.

Part 2 will show how to put in the recipes and yields.

Part 3 will describe how to link the ingredients to get the cost of each recipe

Part 4 will show how to refine the costs by deleting information such as the way eggs are sold per unit but the excel sheet says per 1000. This changes the cost and makes it unrealistic.

Part 5 will teach students to gather the ingredients and sort them into the final order format ready for processing.                   

Looking at the R2D2 model, what do the students need to do?

• Reading - locating resources find the videos and the file to work in
• Writing – communicating the process - filling in the required field communicating how that went - if the numbers are making sense or not and why that may be
• Doing - diagnosing needs, locating resources - who needs further assistance - who can give that from the group?
• Displaying - evaluating learning - 

Here are two really useful blogs relating to adult learning and engagement:
http://dynamind-elearning.com/2013/11/can-we-develop-e-learning-that-respects-adult-learning-principles/

http://blog.cathy-moore.com/

This week's goals:
Once the goals and action plan are set then WORK on them!!!!!! Time is marching on and it's a matter of getting on with it now. In 4 week's time we will have a whole lot of new students that I can try out my revamped learning event on.

Developing a teaching philosophy and Teaching Action Plan

Not much to report on the Mobile Learning this week apart from the fact that I have a great looking microphone and a good desktop stand for it. Very happily I received good feedback in last week's reflection for Mobile Learning, that I had written clear deep reflections giving me a firm foundation on which to build my Mobile learning activity. This gave me a great deal of satisfaction particularly since while reading it over, I began making notes to myself where I thought I needed to be more specific about what I was trying to get across. I think this is that thing called meta-reflection. I haven't even tried the microphone out yet, as it has been all about developing my teaching philosophy and writing an action plan for professional development. Both sound a lot easier than they seem at first sight...

I'll share all of this when I have my marks back. Suffice to say after having done the teaching perspective inventory in the past fortnight I am quite comfortable with the fact that I seem to be sailing on an even keel. It's nice to think I have found a certain equilibrium within my teaching self. That allows me to see what I want to improve based on student successes and struggles, without feeling the need to chastise myself over my 'failings' as it is not necessarily anything I have done wrong rather than that I would see things needing to be changed. The action plan began writing itself purely with what I wanted to achieve from the student's perspective. At some point today I realised that there needed to be a lot more about what I want to achieve as a practitioner so another hunt for teaching action plan templates ensued. With a bit of tweaking I now feel as if I am developing a plan that will improve my delivery as well as the student experience. The background work will be the most demanding. I have a busy month ahead of me getting the templates all organised and using the screen casting software - that also needs to be storyboarded so I have a good guide for what needs to be accomplished. Formulating what needs to be improved from two perspectives has been quite useful in that I have a more clear idea of what work needs to be done and how much will need to be rewritten - that I will try to minimise since there is limited time and I want to spend more on developing the screen casts. Suddenly I have more than one in mind - I knew that would happen but was hoping that the ideas would wait a bit longer - perhaps a few static screen shots via a website will be a good substitute? Does that mean I have to develop a Wix website as well now?

Let's keep it simple. Start with a storyboard and go from there.

There are some great visuals and concepts forming both in my head and on paper, yet also a lot of empty spaces around them that need to be filled in to complete the whole scenario. With time and thought that will happen.

Goals for next week:

1. assignment to be submitted on Monday
2. prioritise what needs to be worked on next - the action plan will help with that. There will be a fair amount of tandem projects 
3. refine this journal and write a new summary for Teaching in Action for next Saturday's class. This week's blog post will help me out.

Let's see how the reflective writing comes along - shall I make a new wordle again? I guess it depends on what terms and concepts I come across in the next few days. Oooh, I could put this into a Word Sift and see how that turns out.

New reflections x 2

A new semester has started and I have 2 new courses to enjoy, Teaching practice in Action and Mobile Learning & Teaching. The first class was yesterday and it was great to see everybody again, ready for the next chapter. 

Teaching Practice in Action:

We had been given our new communities and paperwork 2 weeks ago and that was a really smart move because our first assignment is due on August 8th. We are to write an analysis of our teaching practice, develop our teaching philosophy, and identify potential areas for professional growth. That will be presented with an action plan designed to improve an aspect of our own teaching, as a form of professional development. I delved into what it means to write a teaching philosophy and was overwhelmed with the variety of formats and examples. Downloaded a few, and read a few as well. I filled in a template from Ohio State University and did the Grasha-Reichmann Teaching Style Survey. Interesting how I see this on a day to day basis and how I interpret questions. Overall my style is fairly even, just like my learning styles according the Honey and Mumford Learning Style Survey, or Fleming's VARK Questionnaire.

I think this is because I seem to be more open to ways of being and seeing than I used to be, and am more willing to try new tools. At the same time I found myself squirming a lot this week over the thought of having to dig deeper into the whys and hows of my actions and reactions in a teaching sense. I suspect this is going to get rather personal and I will have to face a bit more than I might be ready to.

Knowing someone would be taking my place for the theory classes this trimester, was quite disconcerting and I had to really scramble to make sure both Ralf and James had decent plans for those first three weeks! It made me see how much more detailed my lesson plans have to be if someone is truly to take over - we tend to have so much noted superficially and mentally that any one else would struggle to take over - despite our belief that we are quite clear!  The act of explaining my approach and having someone else carry that out was quite strange yet very good for the both of us. I think for Ralf it was really strange having to follow someone else's methods that use technology in a very different way than he does. The fact that I didn't have the most complete lesson plans ended up being a bonus for both of us: Ralf got some control back by revising and updating them and I had to explain what and why I was wanting certain things in place. I think together we have made a much better lesson package that a lot of other people would be able to work with.This collaboration is highlighting our strengths working together and hopefully improving our students experiences while they are with us. I feel that we are making good progress which is already enabling us to take the next step in creating more meaningful  learning experiences. This process has made me question more deeply what I mean to achieve in any given time frame, and the value of each exercise. It's also given me more confidence to explore with the students what their own thoughts and motivations for study are in an attempt to see how I can encourage them into more successful engagement.

Mobile Teaching and Learning:

Confusion reigned in my head for some time here. Were we supposed to include our peers in our current teaching groups? Were we supposed to evaluate each person's activity? If an exercise and a test was not enough then would it be acceptable to get students to learn how to do the order system I currently use for their shop planning? By the end of the day all my questions were answered and happily I can get on with planning and implementing my original thought, which is to record how to use the order sheet properly, and chunk that into bite sized pieces. Along the way I'll plan small tasks that allow users to review how successfully they are getting on with the exercise. 

I'm really pleased I decided to spend time last week researching and trialing some screen casting software. I think I'm happy with the SmartPixel format, and I'm excited to be getting a decent microphone to record with. I think I'm ok now with the idea of doing voice overs. Since making assessment videos in the last 2 years I include much more of what goes on in class as that makes it more authentic and personal to the students viewing. Hopefully over time they also get to recognise each other in the clips.

Lonely Screen lets me cast my iPad screen to the computer. For now I'm not sure how much screen sketching I'll do for this activity, but it's good to have all of that in place. I'm excited to be getting on with this as its been in my head for the past 3 months since I had to hand over the theory classes to Ralf. That really brought home to me how individually we all teach and how specific my teaching has become with regards to how I hand over more responsibility to the students. It helped me to confirm what is going well and highlighted areas that need refining, especially how to teach the ordering system for the shop day has been a work in progress for a really long time and I hope this final step of recording the process will really benefit everyone. The intention is to free up class time for helping solve problems with inputting, and let students confirm they are on the right path. The students will have a tool they can refer back to and let that guide them even if it is the middle of the night. They'll be able to give each other more support because there will be the step by step recordings to refer back to while they use the shared file to complete their work.

Mini Steps in Research and Big Steps in Confirmation

As I wrote 2 weeks ago in the Hamster blog, I gave myself some goals:

1. Read the books and get the relevant extracts
2. Start on the introductions for my essays and put my subject matter into context
3. SAVE the blog as I write 

1. I got through a lot of the books I got from both the library at AUT, and the one at MIT, Interesting in itself, I know the MIT library very well, & got some great advice from one of the librarians about using the online website. At AUT on the North Shore, first I had to find what I thought were the relevant sections, and then find the books. Not happening, so I finally found a computer that would allow me to search for books - I was allowed 10 minutes only and I wanted about 6 titles so that was hard, then I found out that the books were all in unexpected places, that is, if they were in the collection to start with. Somewhat frustrating, and found myself wanting to be in a familiar library where i knew how it worked. To top it off I could only have the books for 2 weeks, not the 4 weeks I am used to from MIT! I finally found about 3 from the list as well as one or two that I thought looked suitable for my 2 courses. It was good advice from Linda to look at the Introduction and the conclusion to see if I was interested in the text or not.

2. I did get started on the introductions and I tidied up the working essays quite a lot. Added references from the books as well as form internet documents that I managed to find through Google Scholar - that's another interesting website. So many likely looking works require a log-in to their site, or else they demand payment for the work. It took quite some time to find some readings that looked suitable for my topics - I had to work out what to formulate as a search topic as well; my questions as they stand, brought me in circular motions to where I needed to go. While looking for deeper learning and compressed time frames, I ended up with a fair amount on studies about block vs semester vs trimester delivery (Impact of Course Length on Student Learning by Adrian M. Austin and Leland Gustafson 2006), as well as studies about flipped classroom and reversing delivery, ie going away from didactic delivery to student centered activities. (Flipping for Success: Evaluating the Effectiveness of a Novel Teaching Approach in a Graduate Level Setting by John Moraros, Adiba Islam, Stan Yu, Ryan Banow and Barbara Schindelka, 2015). What I seem to be discovering, is that what I began doing in July 2015, is more or less what the writers of these documents themselves delivered after a significant amount of time researching methods and preparing lessons.

The data from student surveys indicate that despite students' wish for teacher led delivery, they discovered that group work and preparation beforehand, gave them deeper learning in the long term. Now to find something that connects deeper learning with compressed time frames - (or have I got it already implicit in these findings already? Or, if it is not to be found, then I really do have a researchable topic!)

3. SAVING is now something I have learned and will keep doing, not putting myself through that again. I used to always tell myself to write in a Word Document and then transfer that over - which really is the wisest thing to do, but psychologically, I find that I like to write within the blog because that is more tangible as I write my reflection.

Goals for next week:

1. Take the time to write a lot of what I have been reading in a way that fits both my Research Question, and my Special Topic. I can feel deeper down that they are very interchangeable. I'm thinking to the future as well, as I have a dark brown feeling I'll be researching something next year or the next (all going according to plan) - so I need a topic for research that will last the distance. If I can't find much about deeper learning in a compressed time frame, and at the moment that's my Special Topic. So if I stick with that then I can see how that develops in there and apply that to research at a later date. Hopefully the Research paper will allow me to get a good feeling for the way I would like to conduct research in the future, and apply that to the deeper learning in a compressed time frame.
2. Prepare for class on 30 April, I need to put together a short presentation about where I am in both topics. For Research it's a 5 min presentation, and for Special Topic it's another summery to be used for feedback from my classmates - so will need to be very careful that I follow the guidelines more effectively than I did a month ago.

Last Big Step for the week:
I found a great website for an interactive Wordle: https://tagul.com/
So my latest foray is for my Level 4 baking students:
Interactive Biscuit Wordle

The beauty of Tagul is that each word will act as a link to a website, so I can link each word to a relevant website to get the definition I want in a baking context. This picture is not linked but the link Interactive Biscuit Wordle above it is. This is my first attempt so it is about 85% accurate, but you'll get the idea.

This week's conclusion:

While I write, I catch myself reflecting on what I have achieved in the last 2 weeks. Even though I don't have a lot of pages of my own written work to show for it, there is a lot of material that I have gathered up, both online and in books. I've photocopied and highlighted a LOT of pages, and discovered a lot of common ground between what my readings have shown me and what my deeper thoughts tried to tell me. It's been very satisfying being able to confirm such a lot of my current practice as being relevant and useful to student activity and their successes.
I want to incorporate more of my reading into the writing that I produce, I think it will be a good habit to refer back on a regular basis, as it should actually consolidate the thinking that resonates within my mind. I'm pleased with the progress in my head, but still find it incredibly challenging to translate that into tangible efforts. I allow myself to get caught up in what is going on at home - keep saying I'll do it later and of course before I know it, it is Sunday evening and I wanted to do more  seem to struggle with the concept of an hour here and there - once I am into it, I want to keep going, as I find I can keep my train of thought going better when I spend 3-4 hours working.

So, my Mini Steps in Research are bigger than I think, and my Big Steps in Confirmation are very satisfying to my current professional practice.